Page 39 of Fractured
My heart skipped a beat. “The same Ice Queen who owned this place, right?” This fucking room that had trapped me inside itself, and that wassentient,if a talking lynx was to be trusted.
“The queen who ruled this kingdom,” he said, the words rolling off his tongue the same way they would from mine. “The rightful heir of the Frozen throne.”
“And now she’s dead.”
Thy lynx stopped moving. I wasn’t exactly sure if he breathed at all, but he became still as the walls for a second, blue eyes on me but I doubted he could see me.
“Perhaps,” was what he finally said.
“What do you mean,perhaps? The Ice Queen is dead. They say she was killed in the Midnight Court, don’t they? I don’t know much but I knowthat.I know the guy they framed for killing her.”Rune.A six-year-old child—and they said he killed a queen.
So fucking absurdthat I still found it almost funny.
The lynx turned around then, and began to pace forward and back, head down, tail low. I got a good look at him for a moment—his height and his silvery white fur, the way it shimmeredjust like the forest had done after I…exploded,for lack of a better word. The shape of his muzzle and his ears and his paws—how is he real?
“The Midnight Court,” the lynx said. “The Midnight King.”
“Yes. They blamed it on his bastard son. I know the story. They framed a six-year-old boy,” I said and sat up straighter. “But regardless of that—the queen is dead, and I am stuck in this palace now, and I want to fucking knowwhy.” It wasn’t too much to ask, was it? Not after being kidnappedand dragged here by the ankle. It wasn’ttoo muchto be angry.
Yet the cold underneath my skin was far from trying to force itself out of me the way it usually did, which was strange all on its own.
“I don’t know,” said the lynx, and he was still moving, still looking at the floor.
“Youdon’t knowwhy you brought me here, but you knew enough to find me and then drag me all the way to this place? Again—a bit convenient, don’t you think?” I said, sticking my fingernails in my palms to stop myself from screaming, both because I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere if I lost control, and because the lynx.
The way he looked. The way he moved.
Fucking hell, hereallylooked stressed out. As stressed out as I was.
“I don’t know what happened, just that she went to the Midnight Court for a feast in her honor,” he eventually said.
“Shediedat that feast. They claim a six-year-old boy killed her because of some prophecy.”
He raised his head then. “The prophecy.”
“Yes, the prophecy that said she was going to be killed by the son of the Midnight King—you should know this! You’re a talking lynx, for fuck’s sake—you should know all this better than me!”
My heart hammered in my chest. The lynx sat down in front of me slowly, those wide eyes, so blue. So icy.
So identical to the eyes of the Ice Queen in that portrait.
Tomine.
This place was going to fucking drive me insane for real, if it didn’t kill me first.
“The prophecy,” he whispered in my voice. “The prophecy did not kill the queen.”
“Yes, it did. They said it did. They said Rune killed her and he was banished for it.”
“No.” My mouth opened to argue, but he beat me to it. “No—the queen was never going to let the prophecy be the end of her.”
“Well, I don’t know what she was going?—”
“Surviveit,” he cut me off. “She planned tosurviveit...”
As he said this, the lynx, he sounded like I did when I was just thinking of something. When I was just realizing something or having a fucking epiphany, and that’s what those wide eyes of his looked like, too.
“How?” I said, and my own voice was dry. Weak.
